New System Generation, WIP #1

And not only that, I’ve picked up the torch of Sci Fi world-building again. Thanks to Emmett‘s comment, I ditched my old, ugly world generation scripts written in shell and awk (really, what was I thinking). I always wanted to learn Python anyway.

So far, my script does some basic generation work. The beauty here is that it not only reliably produces data using supplied random seeds, I also set this up in an object oriented fashion. That is, this is wholly modular and I might end up with an entire universe generator in one piece of software.

Anyway, here’s some sample output:

And yes, it’s called hello.py because I started with “Hello World” and then just kept adding pieces. I guess this is about 2h of work so far.

The BBC posted an article about modern designs of research stations in the antarctic. There are some really, really gorgeous designs and these are of course much more practical than ye olde wooden shed.

Related

This was posted on Reddit a while ago; someone created graphics showing what Earth sunsets may look like if our Sun were replaced with another star. I do not know how accurate these images are, but they are surely beautiful:

Click to embiggen the image.

Related

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet, in the system, J1407b, which is 200 times the size of the ring system of Saturn. There are also gaps in the rings which they think indicate the presence of moons there. The Contact Light setting has got to have at least one gigantic ring system like this!

Ancient Star System

In other news, Kepler has found an ancient planetary system. The system, Kepler-444, is 11.2 billion years old. It has at least five planets – all of them too hot to support life – but it means ancient systems can exist amidst much younger stars. Planets on which civilizations rose and fell long before life even got started elsewhere.